Aborted XP Home Repair - Now stuck in "setup is being restarted...." loop

Wondering if someone can lead me out of this labrynth...

Using the CD that came w/ my Dell, I attempted to do a Repair.

I booted from the CD and chose the Recovery Console option. This
dropped me into a command console environment, and asked me to select
which paritition I wanted to repair and to provide my administrator
password. Cool. No problem.

Somewhere back in the recesses of my reptilian brainstem, I remembered
reading somewhere that when you load this CD, you get the first
option:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

And somewhere down this path, you get the choice to Repair the
installation.

Well, I rebooted and when Prompted, I hit Enter
I hit F8 to accept the license agreement
I pressed 'R' to repair the selected windows installation.
Windows Examined my disk.
Windows did its thing and warned me that it was rebooting.

When windows rebooted and dropped back to the *ahem* Repair, it LOOKED
like it was going to reinstall the operating system. I freaked out
and powered off the machine, and this, I think, was the real start of
my problem.

Now, every time I boot, I get a light blue screen with the
wods.."Setup is being restarted...." This lasts about 30 seconds,
then I'm dropped into a blank, light blue screen with a big mouse
cursor (which I can move around). I never get prompted for the CD.
I've tried getting into Safe Mode and I cannot.

Have I inadvertantly shot myself in the foot? Anyone know how I can
get back to my login without having to wipe the machine. I've used a
live Knoppix CD and pulled most of my personal data off the box, just
in case, but I'm sure I've missed something that will prove vitally
important next week.

Edit the boot.ini file and remove the references to
\$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat. and delete the associated folders

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827324

You can do that with your Live Knoppix.

Yes, it does the same thing... and more. Running chkdsk or fixboot is
not necessary to remove an incomplete setup. There is always a risk of
loosing files when running chkdsk so you should be careful with it.

I was just reading an article "Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands"
which describes these steps:
C: Attrib -H C:\\boot.ini
C: Attrib -S C:\\boot.ini
C: Attrib -R c:\\boot.ini
c: del boot.ini
c: BOOTCFG /Rebuild
c: CHKDSK /R/F
c: FIXBOOT

Which as you can see, is basically deleting the current boot.ini and
getting windows to recompile the boot.ini

I'm still no joy. I did the boot.ini fix, but, when I reboot, I see
"Setup is being restarted...." then I'm dropped to a light blue screen
with a big white mouse cursor that just sits there, forever. When i
boot to safe mode, I end up at up at a black screen with SAFE MODE
across the top that just sits there, forever. When I boot off the XP
rescue cd, i have no 'Repair' option under the Setup.

There's got to be a way to restore the system files without losing all
of my data, my settings, my software, my registry...which is all
there; beautifully visible via knoppix. I can't stand the thought of
losing 4 years of configuration because a few files are corrupt or
missing. I've come close, twice, to blowing away my main partition
and reinstalling, but I can't stomach the thought of reinstalling all
of my software and service packs.

Can you think of anything else that might help?

The BOOTCFG /Rebuild must've added the \$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat back
in the boot.ini file. Boot with your Knoppix cd and copy the contents
of the boot.ini file here and someone will tell you which lines to
remove to fix it. Was the computer capable of booting before you
attempted the repair? Do you have a floppy diskette drive? If so you
might be able to boot with a floppy boot disk

[Somedood]

Wow. Sorry for reviving an old thread but I need help. This exact same thing happened to me. Few days ago, my XP Pro randomly contracted the BSOD and so I tried fixing it by running the repair from my Windows XP CD.

After it restarted, like this guy, I freaked out after seeing what I thought was Windows reinstalling itself and forced shut-down my computer. Now whenever I start it up, I get the same light blue screen with "Setup is restarting........" then my PC reboots itself and it becomes a loop. With safe mode, it just shows the black screen with the safe mode border for a few seconds and reboots itself. I've tried rerunning the repair with no luck.

I tried what this guy says and I tried rebuilding my boot.ini file with recovery console and running chkdisk and I've also tried opening it with Knoppix but there's no such "\$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat" reference in it or anything. Just a normal boot.ini file. Not sure if this guy solved his problem, since it seems he never came back here but does anyone know how I can solve this without wiping my computer clean or transferring files onto anything external? I just want my old computer back.

If you want your old computer back, the first step is to transfer your files
to something external. Your current setup apparently has significant
problems and you are at high risk of losing whatever is on it..

It will take you less time to stop, back up your data, and do this properly
than to try to recover in a haphazard manner. Data recovery is not
necessarily reliable.

If you don't have anything external, get a new drive - where I am, 500gig
drives are about $60 - remove your old drive and set it aside. Put the new
drive in and do a clean install. *After* that is complete, attach the old
drive and copy your data to the new install.

You probably interrupted the process when setup files were being copied to
the drive, and the boot.ini file was already modified to include an
additional boot option for setup, which was set to default.

The cure, using Recovery Console, is to navigate to the root folder of
your system drive, (usually C:\) and:
rename boot.ini boot.old
and then:
copy boot.bak boot.ini
and then:
exit

What was the original BSOD message, (including text that LOOKS_LIKE_THIS,
and complete error codes that look like: 0x00000000)

What Service Pack level is your WinXP pro setup? SP2? SP3?
What Service Pack level is the installation CD?
(What other details did you forget to mention above? :)

[Warichet]

I'm in exactly the same situation as Somedood.

My problem arised all of a suden, for no apparent reason, light blue screen with only an active cursor. So I though it's a virus or a hardware problem.
I thought the video controller was dead. I got another PC, exactly the same, installed the original disk in it, same problem. So my XP is corrupt, for sure.

I installed the original disk in another computer in order to scan it for virus, although my McAfee is up-to-date, I discovered and removed a trojan horse A0057140.exe. After reboot, no luck. Maybe the trojan has damaged system files.

I've read a Windows XP repair procedure. I first slipstreamed a new XP CD with SP2, then I tried a repair, but when I restarted I got the same light blue screen with "Setup is restarting........"

Also, as mentionned above: with safe mode, it shows the black screen with the words "safe mode" on all 4 corners, but no control of XP

I tried the boot.ini hint, but it is not applicable as there is no such thing as "\$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat"
XP thinks the setup is incomplete, it must be remembered somewhere, any hint ? probably in the Registry ?

Indeed, the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\SystemSetupInProgr
had a value of 1

I loaded the system hive from another computer, changed the value to 0
Unloaded the hive (the file time stamp reflected the change, so I guess the operation succeeeded).
Put the disk back in place and rebooted
No luck
Either my registry procedure is wrong, maybe no actual write happens to the hive or "someone" puts the value back to 1.
Any idea ?

Anyone has an idea where the so called incomplete setup is remembered which
causes the "Setup is restarting......." message ?

It is definitely not the boot.ini with a line like
"\$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat"
XP thinks the setup is incomplete, this is wrong, as the system was in
perfect working condition before I executed de XP repair (and I executed the
repair procedure because the boot sequence was stuck with a light blue
screen with only the active cursor on it)

I removed the disk from the PC and installed it on another computer, then, I
started RegEdit and loaded the Software hive.
I checked \Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and the Run and RunOnce key,
nothing special in there.
I guess I missed it.

Maybe another/better idea ?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\SystemSetupInProgress

The SystemSetupInProgress 0x1 value signals to the operating system that
the setup in in progress.

[Warichet]

I've found several keys which could possibly affect this loop behaviour.
But after having reset them to 0, at next reboot I still get the
"setup is being restarted...."

So there must be a master process which triggers the whole scenario, any idea ? Also to be noted, this behaviour arised after having executed the XP repair procedure. Any clue ?

[Deprived]

Sorry to revive this thread, but can we get a solution? Same exact thing happened to me. What can be done to resolve this issue?

[Warichet]

Sorry, I can't help.
Despite all the tips I've got and all my efforts (I'm not a beginner) it was a total failure, still on my stomach.

[chaitu21]

Guys i also encountered the same problem and it should be kept in mind that first data backup should be done for that use Windows live CD which helps u to save the data actually it is OS with minimal functionality and runs without installing on the system when system has booting problems just like the current scenario. Next thing is forget about the getting back the same system in tact i have tried in many ways but lets face it u cannot get it back.But there is way not to lose data by installing the OS on the existing c drive without formatting it. In that way the data in the c drive will be safe in 95% of cases